Opinion

It's so artfully done, and so diabolical, that one can picture secret seminars in subterranean Wall Street meeting rooms, guiding young business recruits in the proven process of taking an extra share of wealth from the middle class.

Just because Christie criticized the most unproductive and unpopular House of Representatives in the history of the U.S. Congress doesn’t make him particularly brave, and it certainly doesn’t mitigate his more conservative policy positions.

If you were to see some poor soul, let's say, taken from their home, brutally beaten down, robbed and humiliated by a gang of thugs whose only thought was to increase their own pleasure and personal gain, what would you do? Would you look away, draw the curtains and hope someone else would do the right thing?

Despite such terminology as "fiscal cliff" and "debt ceiling," the great debate taking place in Washington now has relatively little to do with financial issues. It is all about ideology. It is all about the soul of America.

Gohmert got his law degree at Baylor, which either goes to show that nobody is totally dumb or that just because someone’s a lawyer doesn’t mean they’re smart. Then he got himself elected judge, and all would have been fine if Gov. Rick Perry had never appointed him chief justice of an appellate court.

Three trillion dollars a year. That's how much the wealthiest Americans avoid through the system of subsidies and schemes and sweet deals that deprive middle-class workers of their earned benefits. That's three times more than the deficit. That's enough for a full-time job for every middle-class household in America.

America tried to fire congress on Election Day when Democrats won a slight majority of congressional votes, 49 percent to 48 percent, yet Republicans ended up with the second-biggest majority in 60 years. The most-ineffective, most-unpopular congress in American postwar history is immune to our votes.

We enter the new year with a degree of optimism, because Americans, except for Congress and the uninformed, are beginning to realize that cooperation transcends self-centeredness as a means of national betterment.